Provincial administration of the post office--Reduced
postage--Railway mail service--Arrangements with United
States.
The several provinces took over the post offices within their
territories in 1851, Canada on the 6th of April, and Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick three months later. The postmaster general of Canada was made
a member of the executive council--the provincial cabinet--from the
beginning. The postmaster general of Nova Scotia was never a member of
the council, but administered the department as a subordinate official.
In New Brunswick, the department was administered on the same plan until
1855, when the postmaster general was made a member of the government.
During the period of separate provincial administrations, which
continued until 1867, when they were merged in the post office
department of the dominion of Canada, the record is on the whole one of
steady uneventful progress. Postal accommodations were extended, always
as occasion demanded, and seldom as immediate prospective revenues
warranted, with the result that the expenses generally outran the
revenues. This condition, however, caused little or no discontent, as
the provincial governments realized, as the British government could
not, that on the efficiency of the postal service depended in no small
measure the welfare of their people.
Stayner, in his valedictory to the postmasters of Canada, took credit
for the thriving and effective state in which he left the post office.
He believed that the improvements had fully kept pace with the growth of
the country during the period of his administration. In that period, he
pointed out, the increase in the number of post offices, amount of
revenue, and in the number of miles annually travelled with the mails
was more than six hundred per cent., a measure of progress not exceeded
by any public institution within the province.
Stayner's words contained no more than the truth. When he entered on the
office of deputy postmaster general he brought with him considerable
experience as a subordinate in the service. He gained early, and
retained to the end, the esteem and confidence of his superiors in
England, and if he lost popularity for a period in this country, it was
because he saw the folly of trying to serve two masters.
No one perceived more keenly than Stayner the inadequacy of the
accommodation he was permitted to extend to the rapidly expanding
settlements of the country; and no one could be more persevering in
bringing the facts to the attention of the postmaster general. The
contrast between the mail service on the north and south side of lake
Ontario affected him, as it did the people of Kingston and Toronto, and
he risked the regard of St. Martins-le-Grand by expressing sympathy with
the general feeling. The postal accommodation, which did not hold out
the prospect of, at least, self-maintenance, the authorities there did
not desire to have brought to their notice.
While sharing the general sense of the necessity of postal communication
in many parts of the country, Stayner took on himself the blame that
they were not provided. Fortunately for him, he was abundantly able to
take care of himself. By attaching himself to the government party he
earned a measure of the odium, which fell on them. But he entrenched
himself against too violent attack, and secured champions whom the
British government would willingly listen to. He managed to secure a
very large income from obnoxious perquisites, but it would seem from
later developments that this was rather a matter of good fortune, than
of any deliberate effort on his part.
The postmaster general and the colonial secretary had the strongest
objections to these perquisites, but when they sought the means to get
rid of them, they tried for some years in vain. The perquisites would
fall to somebody, since they were of the appurtenances of that position.
That Stayner served the country, as well as his relations with the
department in England would permit, admits of no doubt. William Lyon
Mackenzie, who abhorred the post office and all its ways, was fain to
concede that Stayner was the man, whom, of all he knew, he would most
readily support for the position of deputy postmaster general.
With how vigorous a hand the postmaster general of Canada set about his
task of providing adequate postal accommodation for the country, may be
judged from the fact that the number of post offices which in 1851 was
six hundred and one, was increased to eight hundred and forty-four
during the first twelve months.[293] The system was extended in Canada
as far west as Kincardine. The courier services to Sarnia and Goderich
on lake Huron were made daily, as was that to Bytown (afterwards
Ottawa).
Within five years the number of post offices had risen to one thousand
three hundred and seventy-five; and in 1861, ten years after the postal
service was taken over by the Canadian government, the number had been
augmented to one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five offices,
practically threefold the number in operation in 1851. When Canada
entered confederation it took into the postal system of the dominion two
thousand three hundred and thirty-three post offices.
The people of Canada responded with great readiness to the invitation to
use the post office, which was offered through the reduction in the
charges. When the Canadian post office was taken over, the rates varied
according to the distance letters were carried. The postmaster general
estimated that they yielded on the average ninepence a letter. The
reduction to threepence was, therefore, a diminution of two-thirds.
It is noteworthy how completely fulfilled was the prediction that the
low rates would so increase the number of letters carried that, in a
short time, the revenue, which was certain to fall for the moment, would
recover itself and return to the figures of 1851. For the year ending
April 1851, the last year of the high rates, the revenue was $335,208.
In the following year, with the reduction of the rate to one-third of
what it had been, the revenue fell to $239,608. But it was observed that
the number of letters posted had increased by over fifty per cent.
In 1855 the effect of the reduction, coupled with the extension of the
facilities to the public, was to produce a revenue of $368,168. Ten
years after the great reduction in the rates the revenue had risen to
$683,035, and at the time of entering confederation it was $914,784.
Among the most important of the facilities introduced in 1851 were
postage stamps, the values being threepence, sixpence, and one shilling.
Curiously enough, the obvious advantages of postage stamps did not
strike the people at the time. This is in large measure accounted for by
the fact that the use of stamps involved a change in attitude on the
question--who should pay the postage.
The old theory was that the service rendered to an individual by the
post office should not be paid for until the letter was actually
delivered. There was always a certain proportion of letters the postage
of which was paid at the time they were handed in at the post offices,
but the proportion was small. The regular practice was to allow the
recipient of the letter to pay for it.
This attitude had to be overcome, and natural conservatism delayed the
change for some time. Indeed, it was not until a fine in the shape of
additional postage was imposed in cases where letters were not prepaid,
that the practice was entirely changed.
The charges on the transmission of newspapers in Canada were among the
matters that received early attention. There was a strong feeling
throughout the colonies, that, in the absence of libraries, the high
price of books precluded their general diffusion in the several
communities, and it was therefore necessary that newspapers, the only
remaining means for extending public information should be distributed
at the cost of the government.
In the agreement on the conditions, under which the several colonies
should assume the administration of their post offices, it was
stipulated that, while threepence should be the charge on letters, and
one-halfpenny on newspapers, the several legislatures should have the
power to provide for the free circulation of newspapers through the post
offices.
Nova Scotia abolished the charges altogether when she took over control;
and New Brunswick took the same measure with the restriction that the
newspapers to which the free conveyance would apply should not exceed
two ounces in weight.
In Canada the same end was reached but with more deliberation. The rate
charged at the close of the old regime--one-halfpenny per sheet--was
continued until 1854. In that year this rate was reduced on general
newspapers, and was abolished altogether on periodicals devoted
exclusively to the furtherance of the special objects of agriculture,
education, science and temperance. The postmaster general calculated
that this measure would reduce the revenue by $32,000. In the year
following, the final step was taken, and the charges on provincial
newspapers circulating within the British North American colonies were
removed altogether.
The money order system was established in Canada in 1855, on the plan of
that in operation in the United Kingdom. The amount which might be sent
by a single order was limited to $40, and there was a uniform charge of
twenty-five cents for each order. In 1857, the amount transmissible by
single order was raised to $400, but after a short experience, it was
reduced to $100, and the charges were fixed at one-half of one per
cent. for the smaller amounts, and at three-quarters of one per cent.
for amounts above $30.
On the 1st of June, 1857, a money order exchange was established between
Canada and the United Kingdom, the limit of a single order being fixed
at $20. This was an accommodation which had been called for for a number
of years.
The colonial secretary, as early as 1852, wrote to the postmaster
general of England, pointing out the large increasing emigration to the
colonies, and the desire of persons prospering there to assist their
relatives to follow them. He estimated that over L1,000,000 was sent
yearly through the agency of private firms for this purpose. This the
colonial secretary declared to be worthy of encouragement, and he asked
the postmaster general to consider the question of extending to the
colonies the system of money orders which had proved so successful in
Great Britain. This appeal produced no immediate result.
In 1855, a registration system was introduced. Long previous to this
time, there had been a practice of entering money letters on letter
bills accompanying the mails, but as receipts were not given to those
posting such letters, nor taken from those to whom they were delivered,
the practice was defective as a measure of safety. Under the regulation
of 1855 receipts were given and taken, the charge being two cents.
The greatest advantage the post office was enabled to extend to the
public during this period was due to the opening of railway lines. For
some years progress in this respect was tardy. The first line built ran
from Laprairie, opposite Montreal to St. John's. It was constructed in
1836, and its purpose was to improve the communications between the
Canadian metropolis and the cities of New England and of the state of
New York.
No further steps were taken in this direction until 1847, when another
link was laid in the connections between Montreal and the eastern states
by the building of a line between Montreal and Lachine. These two short
lines, with one opened the same year between Montreal and St. Hyacinthe,
were all the railway lines in operation in Canada until 1851.
During this and the following year, additional lines were laid, but
their object was still the same, to improve the facilities for
transportation between Montreal and the cities of the United States. The
line from Montreal to St. Johns was extended to Rouse's Point, New York,
on lake Champlain, and that to St. Hyacinthe was carried on to
Sherbrooke and the international boundary, where it joined with the
Atlantic and St. Lawrence railway (an American line), and opened a
connection by railway between Montreal and the Atlantic seaboard at
Portland. This city became the winter port of the Canadian steamship
line, the operations of which began in the winter of 1853.
Until 1853, no part of what could be described as the Canadian railway
system had been built. The lines then under operation were all for the
purpose of bringing Montreal within the benefits of the American system.
But this year--1853--three extensive schemes of communication were
begun: the Grand Trunk Company started building the line running from
Quebec to the western limits of the province at Sarnia; the Great
Western Company built a line across the Niagara peninsula from the
Niagara river to Detroit river; and the Northern Company, a line from
Toronto northward to Georgian Bay at Collingwood. These lines brought
the advantages of railway communication to every rising settlement in
Upper and Lower Canada.
As construction progressed the new lines were utilized by the post
office department until the completion, in October 1856, of the Grand
Trunk from Brockville and Toronto brought Quebec into direct
communication by means of the Great Western railway with Windsor at the
western end of the province.
The reduction in time, which the railways had made it possible to effect
in the delivery of the mails between Quebec and the leading points in
the western part of the province was great. In 1853 the ordinary time
for the winter mails to travel from Quebec to Kingston was four days; in
1857, they were carried between the two places in thirty-one hours; to
Toronto the saving in time was the difference between seven days and
forty hours. Before the era of railways ten and a half days were
occupied in the journey from Quebec to Windsor. The railway carried the
mails regularly in forty-nine hours.
The use of travelling post offices, with mail clerks assorting and
distributing the mails from the railways in the course of their trips,
was an early feature of the postal service in Canada. This mode of
utilizing the railways had been in operation in England since 1838, and
before the leading railways in Canada were completed, an officer of the
post office department was sent to England to study the system. Thus, by
1857, this system, which is the leading feature of mail conveyance and
distribution, was in full course in this country seven years earlier
than in the United States.
But gratifying as were the results from the use of railways in the
conveyance of mails, through the sparsely-settled districts over the
immense stretches of our territory, the substitution of steam for horse
conveyance introduced a perplexing financial problem. The postmaster
general noted the peculiar fact that while passengers and merchandise
reaped the benefit of improved speed with an accompanying reduction in
the expense, the change threatened to burden the public with a vastly
augmented charge for the mail service.
Comparing the service by railway with that by stage, it was noted that,
while the stage driver waited at each office he visited, until the mail
he brought was assorted, and arranged for his farther conveyance, it was
impossible owing to the brevity of the stops at the stations, to do this
in the case of the mails carried by railway.
The post office consequently was compelled to train and employ a
distinct class of clerks to travel on the trains, and perform that duty
while the train was in movement. A portion of a car--generally about
one-third--was partitioned off and fitted up exclusively for postal
service. The salaries of these clerks constituted what the postmaster
general regarded as the enormous expenditure of $32,000 a year; and the
necessity created by the nature of the railway service for the provision
of an office on the trains, formed the principal ground on which a
comparatively high rate of compensation was claimed by the companies.
But that was not all. The railways not being able, like the stage coach,
to exchange the mails directly with the post offices of the towns along
the line, side services of an expensive character were required to
maintain the connection between the post offices and the stations. The
expenditure for this class of service, coupled with that for the
employment of the clerks who travel on the railway, exceeded, in most
cases, the whole of the previous expenditure for the superseded service
by stage; and then there were the demands of the railways to be
satisfied.
The rate of compensation for the conveyance of the mails was a subject
of dispute between the postmaster general and the railway companies. The
claims of the latter, however legitimate, were considered by the
postmaster general as out of the power of the department to meet from
its revenues. Several tentative settlements were made, but the final
adjustments were not reached until the appointment of a royal commission
in 1865, which, after hearing the statements of both sides, decided the
terms on a basis which lasted practically unchanged for nearly half a
century.
Nova Scotia entered on the administration of the postal service of the
province with much energy.[294] There were one hundred and forty-three
offices in the province in 1851. These were rapidly augmented and on the
more important routes, that is, those radiating from Halifax to the
eastern and western ends of the province, and to New Brunswick, were
given a frequency, conformable to the importance of the communications.
The number of post offices was in Nova Scotia doubled in four years;
trebled in ten years; more than quadrupled in fifteen years; and had
reached a total of six hundred and thirty when the provincial office was
absorbed into the postal service of the dominion.
Communication with Canada was confined to the land route, seven hundred
miles in length, over which it took ten days travel to reach the nearest
point of importance. By 1854, two other modes of communication had
presented themselves. The Cunard steamers, which called at Halifax on
their way to Boston and New York, were laid under contribution to carry
mails between Halifax and Canada; and the completion of the railway
between Montreal and Portland, Maine, afforded an opportunity of a
connection which was made by a steamer running between Portland and St.
John, New Brunswick.
The value of this service was not as great as it afterwards became when
there was a complete railway connection between Halifax and St. John,
but it nevertheless effected a considerable reduction in time. Thus, in
November 1855, mails were carried between Quebec and Halifax by way of
St. John and Portland in four days, though the average, through the
winter, was about a day more. The steamer carried the mails between St.
John and Portland three times a week in summer, and twice a week during
the balance of the year.
The postage on letters circulating throughout the North American
provinces was threepence a half ounce, and newspapers were transmitted
free of all postage. The registration of letters was introduced in 1852,
the fee being sixpence; and a money order system established in 1859.
The limit on the amount of a single order was fixed at the low sum of
$20 and the charge on each order was the rather high one of tenpence an
order.
By 1860 a fully equipped postal system was in operation in Nova Scotia.
The revenue of the department responded with fair readiness to the
accommodation afforded to the public. For the last year under the old
system, when rates were excessively high, and the accommodation limited,
the revenue was $28,260. The immediate consequence of the great
reduction was a shrinkage in the revenue by $4856 in the following year.
Five years after the low rates were established, the revenue for the
year 1851 was surpassed, and in thirteen years it was practically
doubled. In 1866, the last complete year under the provincial regime the
revenue had reached the respectable sum of $69,000.
The steady expansion of the service entailed an outlay which
considerably surpassed the revenue. In 1852, the first complete year
under the provincial administration, the deficit was $10,500. This
deficiency steadily mounted until for the years 1859 to 1861, it
averaged $29,000. Thereafter it descended as steadily as it had risen,
and during the last three years before the provincial system was
absorbed by the post office department at Ottawa the shortage was
$17,500 a year.
Neither Nova Scotia nor New Brunswick had the advantage of an extended
railway mail service until some years after Canada had been in enjoyment
of it. The service by railway began at the commencement of 1857, the
mails being carried between Halifax and Grand Lake, a distance of
twenty-two miles. In the following year it was extended to Truro and
Windsor, which was the total extent of the railway mail service at the
time of confederation.
It was resolved at the time New Brunswick assumed the administration of
its postal system, to make the postmaster general a member of the
provincial cabinet. But the legislature did not act on its resolution
until 1855, the postmaster general in the interim being, as in Nova
Scotia, merely an officer of the government. In 1851, the post office in
New Brunswick had, in regular post offices and way offices, exactly one
hundred offices.[295] These were increased with much rapidity. After
five years, the number had increased to two hundred and forty-six
offices; and at the period of confederation, there were four hundred and
thirty-eight post offices in New Brunswick.
The conditions under which letters and newspapers were carried in New
Brunswick were the same as those which prevailed in the other provinces.
The postage was threepence per half ounce for letters, and newspapers
were carried without charge. The effect on the revenue was the same as
in the other provinces.
In the first year after the low charges were introduced, the reduction
in the revenue was considerable. On comparing the revenue for the first
six months under the reduced rates with the revenue for the
corresponding period of the preceding year, there was found to be a
diminution of $3959. But the rebound was as rapid as it was in Canada.
In 1853, the revenue had nearly attained the figures of 1850-1851.
Thereafter the progress of the revenue was steady, reaching the sum of
$50,769 in 1866.
As in Nova Scotia, the cost of maintaining the service at its existing
efficiency outran considerably the revenue produced. The deficiency of
revenue to meet expenses amounted in 1854 to $15,316. This shortage
increased to nearly $24,000 in the years 1856 and 1857. There were
variations during the years that followed, but in the last three years
the average annual deficit was rather more than $20,000.
The department at Fredericton took a philosophical view of these
deficits which the government were called upon annually to make good.
The large expenditure, it was maintained, might be fairly viewed in the
same light as the amounts annually granted by the legislature for roads
and bridges and for the support of common schools. "The mail carriage to
all parts of the province secures to the travelling public conveyances
which would not otherwise exist, and the very large amount of
newspapers, etc., which passes through the post office affords strong
evidence that the department may be considered a branch of our
educational system."
Some friction existed between the three provinces, arising from their
geographical relations to one another. The British government made an
arrangement in 1845 for the conveyance of the Canadian mails through the
United States to and from the port of Boston, paying the United States
on the basis of the weight of mails carried. The letters were carried
under this arrangement. But, as the newspapers were not regarded as so
important, the government decided that they should not be carried on to
Boston, but landed them at Halifax, leaving them to be carried by the
couriers who conveyed the mails overland from that city to Quebec.
It was an arrangement which gave no satisfaction to any of the
provinces. Nova Scotia complained that it had to bear the expense of
conveying this mail matter for Canada and New Brunswick across its
territory without any sort of compensation. New Brunswick declared its
case was no better than Nova Scotia's, as it had to forward the Canadian
matter through that province, while Canada protested that the matter
complained of was due to no action or desire on its part, as the
arrangements delayed the delivery of the newspapers until they were
useless. A combined representation to the British government removed the
grievance, by the newspapers as well as the letters being thereafter
sent by way of Boston.
The relations between Canada and the United States were, as was to have
been expected, cordial. A convention was made in 1848 between Great
Britain and the United States, providing for the conveyance of the mails
exchanged between Canada and Great Britain, and in this convention it
was stipulated that the letters and newspapers exchanged between Canada
and the United States should be subject to the combined postage of the
two countries.
Thus the postage on any letter weighing not more than half an ounce, and
sent from Canada to any part of the United States was ten cents. An
exception was made in the case of letters passing between Canada and
California and Oregon. The charge in these cases was fifteen cents.
The construction of the Great Western railway between Niagara Falls and
Windsor afforded an opportunity to the United States to improve its
postal communications between the eastern and the western States, while,
on the other hand before the Grand Trunk railway was built, Canada took
advantage of the lines in the United States running along the south
shore of lake Ontario to accelerate the mails exchanged between Toronto
and Montreal.
FOOTNOTES:
[293] The facts respecting the growth of the post office in Canada are
to be found in the reports of the postmaster general, which began in
1852.
[294] The facts respecting the post office in Nova Scotia are to be
found in the reports of the department, in the appendices to the
_Journals of the Assembly_ from 1852 onwards.
[295] The facts respecting the post office in New Brunswick are to be
found in the reports of the department, in the appendices to the
_Journals of the Assembly_ from 1852 onwards.